Conclusion

"Culture is not a luxury," wrote one Moscow Proletkult participant in 1920.^[1] No words could better serve as the motto for the movement as a whole. Bogdanov first used them in his writings on art and culture before the revolution.^[2] Lunacharskii repeated them when he moved to start the first Proletkult circle in 1917. No matter what the political condition of the country, he insisted, culture was too vital an arena to be ignored.^[3] When defending the organization against political attacks, Valerian Pletnev employed the same phrase, pleading that the Proletkult not be viewed as a luxury that could be cast aside.^[4]

Of course, on a fundamental level the Proletkult's opponents did not believe that culture was a luxury either. Instead, they questioned how best to turn what Pletnev called "this wild, uncultured, semiliterate, and impoverished country"^[5] into a cultured society. The state chose a pragmatic approach, using its elaborate bureaucratic networks to transmit basic

education, labor discipline, and respect for the Russian classical tradition. In its varied programs the Proletkult contributed to this process as well by opening literacy classes and introductory courses in the sciences and humanities. In its workshops, theaters, and choirs it helped to familiarize the population with the prerevolutionary classics.

And yet, at least in the opinion of its most passionate advocates, the Proletkult was never meant to serve as a mere "culture bearer." Instead, its task was to found a new cultural order, an order dominated by a proletarian class spirit. Although no one could articulate just what shape this new culture would take, Proletkultists set incredibly ambitious goals. They wanted an art that would inspire society to productive labor and break down the boundaries between refined culture and daily life. They sought a new science that would integrate all knowledge into a harmonious whole and yet still be accessible to the population at large. They hoped to create a new proletarian intelligentsia that could completely subsume the old intelligentsia but not lose its ties to the working class. It was this utopian agenda that so offended pragmatists like Lenin, who saw such proposals as "harebrained" extravagances that the state could ill afford.

During its long tenure the Proletkult's expansive cultural goals narrowed markedly. Already during the Civil War, local circles abandoned many of their basic educational functions in order to conserve resources and attract a more advanced and gifted membership. The rich and eclectic artistic offerings, from folk music choirs to tonal-plastic studios, were gradually limited as the organization embraced a more unified cultural direction. Grandiose plans to transform science, the family, and daily life were scaled down to projects with much more modest ambitions. Instead of changing proletarian mores Proletkultists tried to restructure club workshops. Instead of addressing inequities inside the proletarian home they reached out to female participants with the promise of sewing circles.

This contraction of the movement's cultural mission was

partly the result of internal politics. Most central leaders had never wanted to provide hygiene lectures or literacy classes and were more than happy to leave these tasks to state institutions. Nor did they aspire to serve all of the laboring masses. In their view the Proletkult's real constituency was the proletariat's cultural vanguard, not the diverse social mix of the Civil War years. As the national organization gained more influence, it intervened in local operations to enforce its own vision of the Proletkult's goals. At the same time, many participants began to lose faith in their ability to transform longstanding habits and institutions, at least in the sweeping manner that they had first predicted. As Kirillov lamented in 1921, "The severe, cruel facts of life have shown us that those things we hoped and dreamed about in our work are very, very far away."^[6]

External opposition also forced the organization to narrow its sights. The Proletkult never was a laboratory, isolated from the rest of Soviet society. It flourished with the aid and support of many allies, including unions, soviets, and parts of the Narkompros bureaucracy. When the Communist Party turned against it, the Proletkult's coalition of support dissolved. With the advent of the New Economic Policy there were fewer funds available for all cultural projects, but money was particularly scarce for an organization with controversial cultural and political goals. The Proletkult's dwindling programs reflected its dwindling resources. It had neither the funds nor the staff to support the wide network that had prospered during the early years.

As the Proletkult's cultural offerings declined, so too did its political ambitions. Once the organization was subordinated to the state, its controversial claim to be the equal of trade unions and the Communist Party was hardly tenable. Indeed, Proletkult autonomy was always a fragile construct, one that proved very easy to undermine. Although it gained the movement many followers, it also earned the Proletkult the party's

animosity. During the New Economic Policy members were much more cautious. The Proletkult named itself the main protector of workers' creative independence, but it no longer posed even a rhetorical threat to state or party authority.

The Proletkult spanned three distinct stages of early Soviet history: the revolution and Civil War, the New Economic Policy, and the radical changes inaugurated by the First FiveYear Plan. Only in the first period was it a major actor in the country's cultural life. Its tenure as a mass organization lasted almost as long as the war itself. The movement began its rapid expansion in the fall of 1918, in one of the first difficult phases of the war. By the late fall of 1920, as the war was ending, Narkompros took control and the Proletkult movement began its swift decline. Undoubtedly the conflict had facilitated Proletkult growth, because the heroic, combative atmosphere of the Civil War years encouraged many to believe that a new social order might be quickly and easily achieved. The organization's utopian cultural agenda fit the spirit of the times.

Because the political structure of the new state was not yet firmly in place, the Proletkult's controversial political ideas did not initially excite broad opposition. Members believed that it was possible, even desirable, to create new institutions that fully supported the regime but still remained outside state control. In 1918 such notions were already problematic, but they could still find some support within Narkompros and the Communist Party. Moreover, despite its claims to independence, the Proletkult provided valuable services for the government. It sponsored pro-Soviet educational programs and joined forces with other groups to enhance the cultural offerings available to the population at large. More important, the movement devoted considerable energy to agitation for a Red victory, both on the home front and on the battlefields.

The social upheavals of the early revolutionary years also encouraged the movement's growth. The Civil War called traditional social categories into question and disrupted estab-

lished notions of social hierarchy. Despite the militant classexclusive language so common in Proletkult pronouncements, participants defined the proletariat in the broadest possible way. In this period of social flux, when the very parameters of the working class were shifting, local organizations ignored class strictures and recruited a very broad social coalition. The Proletkult grew as quickly as it did because its appeal extended far beyond the industrial working class. In essence, it was a plebeian, not a proletarian, movement.

After the Civil War the Proletkult confronted a much less hospitable social and political climate. It faced aggressive new competitors in the arts and found few allies. The organization's following shrank rapidly, at least in part because it had less to offer prospective members. Certainly, by the 1920s those who had joined to take French lessons or to study mechanical drawing had better funded and less controversial options at their disposal. With its limited resources the Proletkult's claims to safeguard workers' ideology against the pernicious influences of the New Economic Policy could hardly inspire much confidence. Indeed, the continuing discussions about proletarian culture were only marginally addressed to the Proletkult. It was a negative reference point, a symbol of the past.

Although the atmosphere changed during the First FiveYear Plan, briefly giving proletarian cultural circles a new lease on life, the Proletkult never reclaimed its former role. The state-sponsored utopianism of the late 1920s and early 1930s was of a different sort than the expansive spirit of the Civil War, a change that Proletkult programs graphically showed. During the revolution the organization proposed to reshape the cultural foundations of society. During the First Five-Year Plan it looked for new ways to put culture to work to facilitate the industrialization drive.

The Proletkult began with extravagant promises, and measured against these goals its accomplishments were disappointing. Its ambitious social programs were never realized. The idea of a unique proletarian science inspired little

support. Within its own circles representatives from the old intelligentsia held powerful posts, and "new intellectuals" like Kalinin and Gerasimov did not display much solidarity with their less advanced worker-comrades. Even in the arts, efforts to find distinctive working-class forms were stymied because participants could not agree on a representative proletarian genre. Proletkult creative production left few marks on future Soviet culture. Already in the 1920s, many regarded its brand of revolutionary romanticism as a curiosity, the expression of a phase of the revolution that had come and gone. By the 1930s critics denounced its innovative work in the visual arts and theater as utilitarian and forrealistic.

But if we judge the Proletkult by such demanding standards alone, we undervalue what it did achieve. The very variety of Proletkult programs, so maddening to central leaders, was evidence of local ingenuity and creativity. Proletkult organizers, even those who did nothing more than open a cultural center, provided important services to their communities. They offered workers, peasants, and white-collar employees a chance to take art classes, listen to science lectures, and put their creative energies to work for the Soviet cause. In the better endowed organizations students came into contact with some of the finest artists in the country. Finally, the very existence of the movement encouraged debates about the political structure of the new state and the role of the working class within it.

The Proletkult did not found a culture of the future. However, it embodied the euphoric optimism of the early years of the revolution, an optimism that fostered the belief that any cook could run the state, any union could manage the economy, and any worker could write a sonnet. This utopian vision did not survive the 1920s, but it was a crucial part of a revolution that sought to transform culture as well as political and economic life.